Eyes up here.

I can't remember if I posted about this before. I'm convinced I have, but a search through my posts hasn't returned any results.

"This" is London Girl's cleavage. She posts quite a lot, and a lot of her photos, specifically her selfies, are taken from above. And in those selfies, she shows off a lot of cleavage.

No real comment, just a thought that popped into my head when I was browsing Facebook earlier today.

Wanderlust.

More desire, of a sort. Wanderlust has returned, presumably as a result of watch the video below: 24hrs Flying First Class from Australia to England. Partly driven by a desire to see E again, and possibly London Girl (see, I'm already semi-planning the trip in my head). And I'd love to do it first class, but do you know how much that would cost? £15,000. Fifteen grand! 

I wish I had the money where I could spend £15k on flights alone and not have to worry about anything.

Sigh.

London Girl is documenting her trip to New Zealand on Facebook. I've been to NZ before and I adore it. I'm staring wistfully at her pictures and the desire to travel is really strong.

Memories.

For some inexplicable reason, I had a memory of FA2 today. Years ago, long before I actually met her in the flesh, London Girl and I used to chat on IRC quite frequently, along with some other people. I had e-introduced FA2 to her and they had chatted infrequently as well. There had been a few times when they chatted when I was out playing football, so part of me always suspected that FA2 was trying to suss out London Girl.

One Saturday afternoon, I was chatting with London Girl when FA2 came into the room, sat on my lap, kissed me and proceeded to take things into very hot and steamy territory.

It was quite a while later when I got back to the chat to see a string of private messages from London Girl demanding to know why I'd gone quiet in the middle of a conversation.

I never told her that FA2 had fucked me in front of the PC, while I sat on the chair in her home office. I wonder how she'd have reacted?

Go figure.

London Girl has been and gone and I think she had a really nice time. It was extremely busy - we barely had time to draw breath in the 48 hours she was in the country. Usually, I would just go to the pub with visitors, but London Girl wanted to explore, so I found a couple of interesting things to do.

We also managed to spend some time in the pub, but we were both so exhausted with the tourism-y stuff that it was nothing more than a couple of drinks each night.

I'd forgotten how close London Girl and I used to be, but that all came flooding back when she asked, on Friday night, if I were currently dating.

I replied in the negative and she asked the obvious question: "why?"

And so, with that one simple question, I sat for easily half an hour, just pouring out my frustrations over the past two years - CB, online dating, lack of introductions to friends' cute friends etc. The topics were obviously intertwined - CB and the friends introduction thing, for example, but I sat there, sipping my pint and telling London Girl how frustrated I was.

I was chastised for not dating E3, which prompted a discussion on whether I should have non-platonic feelings for women whom I find physically attractive. (London Girl's assessment of E3: stunning.) I was criticised for going to pubs and having a good time instead of Going Out On The Pull  (note the capitals) and my friends were criticised for not introducing me to cute friends. In fact, London Girl suggested that I got S and GM out so she could shout at them for being useless.

I did explain my "pressure" theory/preference where I prefer not being told about potential dates, and just getting people into the same room/bar to see if we click, but even at that, I'm still pretty sure that there have been scarcely any attempts over the years. Only the E crossover thing springs to mind and that was easily 8 years ago.

None of the above information is that new to regular readers, but the conversation is the important part here. Even with KfW2, someone I know cares for me a great deal and who is close to me, I still find it hard to talk about personal things. With London Girl, it all just came out with the gentlest of nudges and practically no alcohol. I actually wish I could be that open with KfW2 and CH (and others, but they're the main two).

D'oh.

My last post indicated that I only had one outstanding social engagement to cross off, but when London Girl sent a Facebook message earlier, I suddenly remembered that she's due to visit imminently. Well, within the next few weeks. All the important details are sorted - dates, she's booked the hotel, flights etc. It's just a matter of coming up with a few days' worth of interesting things to do.

A real blast from the past.

Years ago, when I first started university and the internet was still in its formative years, I used to waste time hanging out in a couple of IRC chat rooms.

Like all social things, do it long and regularly enough and you'll find yourself talking to the same people. That happened to me. I clicked with a few people  - a couple of public schoolboy types from London, a female student from London and a couple of people from New Zealand. I especially connected with the female student and one of the girls from New Zealand and we became fairly close. However, even in those early days of the internet, I guarded my privacy.

None of these relationships were secret and they were both platonic, so much so that when I was dating FA2, she would often chat to both women on IRC with me, or sometimes when I was off playing football or whatever.

I did meet London Girl eventually - a weekend in London visiting friends and a handy, spare afternoon, meant we could meet. So we did. And things were no different offline than online. A side note here... while I was in London this weekend, FA2 randomly called me out of the blue while she was on her sabbatical. This was before mobile phones were commonplace, so she phoned home where she was told I was in London. I'd often told her that I couldn't afford to visit her (which I couldn't), but spending money on a trip to London must have annoyed her a little, even if it was about 10% of the cost of a trip to see FA2. Looking back now, I should have realised that there was a reason she wasn't THAT annoyed.

London Girl met a boy in the same IRC chat room that we frequented. She fell in love. She secretly left the country knowing full well that her extremely religious parents would have lots to say. Before she left, LG sent me a letter. In it she told me how much she valued my friendship and said some really nice things. She also included a letter to her parents, confessing everything. So I posted it from my home town, giving off a false trail of "clues" to throw her parents off the case. She was a young woman in her early 20s, so I really didn't have any issues with this (beyond the whole leaving the country to meet a stranger thing).

We kept in touch, on and off. The friendship was always there, but we were losing touch - she wasn't online as much and the last time I did the long-distance snail mail thing was with R2. But I knew when she married the same boy, when she completed her degree, making peace with her family back home, when she was pregnant... all the big events, but it was just that. Even after she joined Facebook, conversations were few and far between and usually short.

I'd almost forgotten about her, despite the fact it's her birthday in a few weeks' time, until I got a private message on Facebook last night.

"Come and see me in Scotland!" LG demanded. "Or I can come and visit you!"

I asked for further details. It appears she's back in the UK for work for a few weeks over the summer.

The conversation continued, but it had a tone that I've not seen before - while she was never serious per se and was always joking, this was different... playful. LG has changed... a lot... but she was talking me round.

We swapped contact details (which, miraculously, were still the same ones from years ago), and the conversation paused as I had a meeting to attend. We will meet up when she's back in the UK, I think. It just has to be seen if she's coming to visit me or if I am going to meet her somewhere.